


Balm in Gilead

by aflaminghalo



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Grayson (Comics)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst and Blow Jobs, Disguise, Dubious Consent, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, M/M, You Can't Go Home Again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-18 23:57:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5948146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aflaminghalo/pseuds/aflaminghalo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternative route through Grayson #12.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balm in Gilead

It would be easier, Dick thinks, if he didn’t know the house. If he didn’t know the carpets, and portraits, and history coating the floors and walls. If the length and breadth and depth of the Manor weren’t the measures against which he’d once held himself. If its inhabitants weren’t the anchors he’d tied himself to that first time his world had swung so violently on its axis.

It would be easier if he didn’t know the man sitting across from him. 

He doesn’t know the man sitting across from him. 

Silent and still, Bruce seems as familiar as every other inch of the room. But the seem is the lie, is the thing that makes it all the worse. Dick’s seen Bruce imitated before, with clones, and robots, and mirages, but this isn’t imitation, isn’t reproduction. It’s a reduction, and Dick can see every gaping edge and unfinished seam where Bruce’s new shape has shrunk away from the old. 

He can feel the difference, feel the distance between them. Their new shapes have no interlocking edges. 

And silence isn’t something he’s ever excelled at handling, but the one that fills the room after Bruce’s offer isn’t one he knows how to deal with at all. It makes his head swim like vertigo. It’s not even the money, or the offer of; it’s that this isn’t Bruce; isn’t the man who knows Dick right through and what they are and mean to each other; it’s the insinuation in it that… 

“Mr Sparrow...?” 

Dick shies away from the thought. Put’s it away for another day. A day when he isn’t pretending to be a stranger to the most important person in his life. A day where he isn’t a stranger to the most important person in his life. 

“No, Bruce, no. This, this isn’t about money.” He smiles, shifts back in his seat, squirms against dark green leather. The warmth of it around him is cloying rather than comfortable and the high arms make him feel trapped. Nothing in this room feels right; nothing in the house. Not Bruce; not himself; not even Alfred. 

Not even Alfred. 

He’d been shocked when the butler had greeted him; at the more obvious changes in the man, and then at all the rules and subterfuge he'd insisted on. At how upset he’d seemed insisting on it... To think that there’s something wrong with Alfred is worse, in a way, than knowing that there’s something wrong with Bruce. Alfred has been the strong support for them all for so long that he needs to know the man hasn’t been left with nothing to lean on himself. 

Dick shifts forward, clasping his hands together between his knees; trapping his desire to touch Bruce, to put a hand on his shoulder and feel that he’s flesh. “But I was hoping that you’d let me have a favor.” 

Bruce regards him for a long moment. 

And it’s so strange to look at that face and see only that; for there to be nothing lurking beneath its surface. Everything Bruce is now is all he is. Even if it isn't very much. 

“A favor. Ah…” Bruce temples his fingers together and lapses back into the silence. Dick can see everything Bruce is considering about him, and Dick, and his request, streaking across his face like silver fishes in a stream. Bruce repeats his words, pronouncing them with even more care. Dick can see as all of Bruce’s suspicions slot into place, can see him finally understanding how things lie between them. 

Bruce takes his hands away, lays them on the arms of his chair, his expression a challenge now, though still as mild. He shifts down in his seat, as close to sprawling as he can manage in it. His legs fall open as he moves. It’s unmistakable; an invitation. 

“Bruce?” Dick breathes and blinks, waiting for the laugh, the punchline, the gotcha. He wonders how stupidly his face is looking at Bruce. 

The silence swells even louder now. It's the final shift, the final push into a geometry that no longer makes any sense. Dick can feel himself lose the battle with gravity, spinning out into the strangeness of his surroundings. There’s nothing left for him to cling to. 

“I’m sorry, I thought... oh, damn, **damn**.” Bruce squirms in his chair, righting his posture at the same moment that Dick slides out of his seat, down onto the elegant rug, down onto his knees. 

Bruce is the one looking on stupidly now, his moment of bravado lost. Dick crawls across the rung and puts his hands on Bruce’s knees, parts them, makes a space for himself there. 

“It’s fine, it’s fine. It’s ok, Bruce.” Dick pops the buttons of Bruce’s fly, watching his fingers as they move with their own mind; waiting for the moment that Bruce will pull him up, will tell him it’s all a joke that’s gone too far. 

But Bruce isn’t Bruce right now. And he’s not himself either, hasn’t been himself since the last time he left the cave. And the masks they’re wearing are not the old familiar ones, the ones that were more themselves than their faces. 

He pushes Bruce’s trousers out of the way and slips his fingers beneath the material to release him. Bruce might be watching Dick with eyes wide like a rabbit in the road, but he lifts his hips easily, eagerly enough. 

And he still doesn’t wear underwear. 

That’s one, Dick thinks. One familiar thing. Ha. Ha. Ha. 

Bruce is more than half hard; thick and hot and glistening at the tip. Dick strokes him tentatively, like an experiment; feeling the flesh strain against his grip, watching the bead of pre-cum gather, hearing Bruce’s almost silent gasp. The urge to look up at Bruce, to catch his eye as he does it is almost overwhelming. He follows his hand on its downward motion with his mouth instead, filling himself with the tang and the heat of it. 

Bruce’s hands pass over his shoulders like little birds; fluttering and weightless. There’s a part of Dick’s brain telling him that this is all wrong; telling him that Bruce, real Bruce would have his hand heavy on the back of Dick’s head already. That Bruce would be telling Dick, making Dick give exactly what Bruce wants. 

Bruce isn’t here right now. He forces himself to take more than he thinks he can. 

He’s not hiding. 

He’s not. 

But he isn’t himself right now either. The suit; the wig; the goatee that catches in Bruce’s carefully groomed pubic hair... None of it, none of this feels the way it should. He wants to rip all the facades away, to dig down to find the kernel of them. There’s got to be some truth left somewhere. 

He digs his fingers into Bruce’s thighs instead and sucks at the weeping head of Bruce’s cock; tries to ignore the polite weight of Bruce’s hands, tries to focus on the heat, and the scent, and the ache in his jaw; tries to pull something out of Bruce that he can recognize. 

He pushes himself down again, claiming the final inch, his lips finally kissing Bruce’s skin. It feels desperate, even to him. His chin is coated with spit, and Bruce, and his throat makes a thick sound when he moves. 

He swallows. And Bruce bucks, finally. His fingers knot in Dick’s hair, holding him in, choking him, making Dick’s eyes water. And Dick does it again and again. He can ignore the discomfort. He can ignore everything that isn’t the the strangled cries he’s forcing from Bruce, the ones that sound so much like Batman during in a fight. 

Bruce’s hands are on the back of his neck now, stroking, grasping, helpless; trying to find his own balance against Dick even as he’s trying to force Bruce over. This won’t help, can’t help, can only send them spinning off into the atmosphere at even more extreme angles. They no longer know each other; their weight, their shapes. No longer know themselves. The old balancing act can only leave them collapsed. 

It’s so close to what he wants. The manor isn’t home, the family _isn’t_ , and Bruce… but this, it’s so close to what he wanted – to feel Bruce in the span of his hands, even if he can’t carry the weight of him; to be able to hear him in his words, even if they lack familiarity. To smell, to taste, to pin Bruce down and for just one moment be near to him. 

And the hands on his skull are finally as hard, the grip in his hair finally as tight as they should be and it finally, finally feels like coming home. 

Bruce looks shattered and dazed when Dick finally makes himself look up. Shaken. But it’s still better than that mild, empty gaze he greeted him with. Bruce gathers himself enough to stutter. “We were great friends, you say… Only friends?” 

Dick pushes himself up, still standing between Bruce’s legs and leans down to press a kiss to his forehead; allows himself a moment to feel Bruce clasp his arm before he pulls away. "Nothing more."


End file.
